Rock and Roll, Candy and Gnomes

I slept in, then spent most of a sunny, breezy fall morning watching Gmomeo and Juliet. An unusual version of the famous Shakespearean tragedy set to the music of Sir Elton John, this animated film from England depicts a running feud between garden gnomes and red hats and in blue hats. When red-hatted Juliet (Emily Blunt) falls for blue Gnomeo (Jim McAvoy), they set off a chain of events that include a wild lawn-mower race, the discovery of an abandoned garden and a lost flamingo (Jim Cummings), and an advice-offering statue of the Bard himself (Patrick Stewart)...all to the tune of some of Sir Elton John's most famous music.

I thought it was one of the cutest animated movies I've seen in years. The cast has a blast with the Romeo and Juliet spoof. Elton John produced, as well as weaving his own music into the story and doing a new duet with Lady Gaga, "Hello Hello," and his showmanship is in evidence throughout the film. There's a surprisingly moving sequence depicting how the flamingo's original owners abandoned their home and garden that was well done, too.

Switched to Felix the Cat: The Movie as I made my bed and vacuumed the apartment. If Gnomeo and Juliet is a little weird, then this one is off-the-charts bizarre. Felix and his Magic Bag of Tricks, along with 50s and 90s villains the Professor and Poindexter, find themselves in the Kingdom of Oriana. The Kingdom and its lovely princess have been overtaken by her evil uncle the Duke of Zill, who wants to turn it into an industrial wasteland.

This is one of the oddest animated films of an era known for some pretty crazy cartoons. Felix and his friends' 20s-style animation doesn't mix at all with the realistically-drawn Princess or the fantastic creatures. Her uncle looks like something out of the Transformers cartoons of the era. For all the strangeness, though, there's moments that work. Felix's first act for the creatures of Oriana is pretty funny (even if they're right and his jokes don't land), and some of action sequences are fairly well-done, including the finale. Fun if you can handle 80s fantasy campiness and/or are a major Felix fan. It's very out of print and expensive online; check used DVD/video stores and yard sales.

I had yogurt and grapes lunch as the movie was ending. I headed out right as it finished. Dropped a bag of clothes and shoes into the donations box behind the Acme, then went to work. Work was on-and-off busy for most of the night. Other than some annoying beginning-of-the-month people, there were no major problems and plenty of help.

When I got in, I heated up leftover Chicken Therese for dinner and did the last of the video to DVD dubbing for myself I'm going to do for a while. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is the first of two versions of one of Roald Dahl's classic children's fantasy novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Poor-but-honest Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) finds a golden ticket that allows him and his beloved, cantankerous Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) to enter the mysterious candy maker Willy Wonka's (Gene Wilder) long-closed factory, along with four other kids and their parents who aren't nearly as kind-hearted as the impoverished Charlie. The five kids and their parents discover that having a sweet tooth isn't nearly as important as a sweet heart, that being rich doesn't mean you have it all...and that the sweetest love of all is forgiveness.

A classic musical with some real heart amid the darkness and wacky stuff, this is a long-time childhood favorite of mine. When we bought our first VCR, this was the movie we rented (from a long-gone video store in Rio Grande). Gene Wilder gave what many consider to be his best performance as the whimsical king of confections, and Jack Albertson is wonderful as Grandpa Joe. It looks like this one is going to be re-released in a few weeks for its 40th anniversary - look for new two-disc DVD and three-disc Blu-Ray sets.

Eddie and the Cruisers is another beloved childhood memory. It's even more important to me than Willy Wonka in some ways, because...well, it's set almost literally in my backyard. Cruisers is based after the book of the same title. A reporter (Ellen Barkin) interviews the members of an early 60s Jersey Shore bar band who had one hit album before their leader (Michael Pare of The Greatest American Hero) disappeared after a car accident. Eddie made tapes of a second album that he claimed would revolutionize the industry...but the tapes disappeared after Eddie did. Can the Cruisers' former lyracist (Tom Bergener) learn to let go of the past and maybe find out what happened to the legacy of Eddie Wilson?

Like Xanadu, this is another 80s movie where the soundtrack did better than the actual film. The music by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band is phenomenal. My family wore out our soundtrack LP well before the 80s (and the popularity of LPs) ended. I bought a CD copy of the soundtrack the weekend after 9/11 as comfort food, and I've had that CD ever since. My alternate online moniker, "boardwalkangel," comes from the title of my favorite song from the score. Most of the movie was filmed in actual locations across the South and Central Jersey Shore area, including Ocean City, Atlantic City, and Wildwood, and it brings back as many memories for me as it probably does for the Cruisers.

There was a sequel, Eddie Lives!, in 1989. It's cheesy and cheap, and didn't do nearly as well as the original. I'm dubbing it for archival purposes and to go with the first movie, but it's really not recommended. To my knowledge, both movies are currently out of print on video and DVD (and the book is out of print as well), but you could probably find them used pretty easily.